Typical Trump speech. It was 19 minutes long. Not all of it was about Iran. From beginning to end, Trump bragged about how everything was successful. It was a long series of lies, so many that I had to categorize them into groups – Why we attaked Iran (2), Attacks on Obama (2), Death counts, Success of war and finally (2) and How incredibly successful he has been in making everything better (2).

Lie #1: Why we attacked Iran (From Factcheck.org)

Trump claimed that before the U.S. attacked, Iran “would soon have had missiles that could reach the American homeland,” but arms control experts have disputed Trump’s claim.

Lie #2: Why we attacked Iran (Factcheck.org)

The president said that Iran was “right at the doorstep” of “a nuclear bomb.” Arms control experts have said that there’s a lack of evidence that Iran was rebuilding its nuclear program before the U.S./Israeli military operation and that a nuclear weapon wasn’t “imminent.”

LIe #3: Attacks on Obama’s Plan:(AP Fact checking site)

Trump criticized an Obama-era agreement that he said “would have led to a colossal arsenal of massive nuclear weapons for Iran” if Trump hadn’t ended it in his first term. That’s Trump’s opinion. One arms control group estimated the withdrawal from the agreement sped up the time it would take for Iran to produce weapons-grade uranium.

The agreement was called the JCPOA, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, It would have required Iran to be subjected to closely monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. See link at end of this post.

Lie #4 (Misleading information): Obama gave Iran 1.7 billion dollars in cash (AP website)

The U.S. Treasury did pay Iran roughly that amount under Obama. But it was not a gift. Rather, it was money owed to the Iranians since the 1970s, when they paid the U.S. $400 million for military equipment that was never delivered because the government was overthrown and diplomatic relations ruptured.

After the 2015 deal to restrain Iran’s nuclear development, the U.S. and Iran announced they had settled the matter, with the U.S. agreeing to pay the $400 million principal in cash, along with about $1.3 billion in interest. Trump later took the U.S. out of the deal.

So, we basically ripped off Iran about 38 years ago, keeping their money and not delivering the military eqipment. It was right not to give them the military equipment, but we shoud have given them back the 400 million dollars.

Yet, I was suprised at the $1.3 billion in interest payments. But, this debt dated back at least ot 1978 or earlier. Assuming the debt ran from 1978 to 2014, I calculate the interest rate of the debt to be 4.1%,a very reasonable interest rate. The money owed on debt at 4.1% interest doubles every 19 years.

Lie #5: Death count of protesters.(AP website)

“This murderous regime also recently killed 45,000 of their own people who were protesting in Iran.”

There is no basis for the 45,000 value. The use of deadly force against protesters in January was an atrocity. The Iranian government put the death toll at 3,117, stating that 2,447 were civilians and security forces, and the rest were “terrorists.” And the government blamed the US and Israel for the protests. It is likely understimated and other estimates are presented on the AP website. We did not attack Iran because of the January massacre.

AP states 53,000 people were arrested. Big difference between being arrested and being killed.

Lie #6: Success of the attack (AP website)

“Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders’ death. They’re all dead. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable.”

From the AP website: “Trump’s depiction of the people now in charge in Iran, after scores of senior leaders were killed in the war, stretches credulity. Israel’s airstrike at the start of the war Feb. 28 killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran then installed his son, Mojtaba, who is viewed as even more hard-line, as supreme leader. The monthlong war has seen Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard grow even more ascendant. Iran’s civilian leadership — broadly untouched by the war — acknowledges it has little command and control over the Guard’s actions.

Both Trump and Israel have signaled they would tell the Iranian people to rise up at a point in the war to take back their government. That hasn’t happened.”

Trump is purposely vague about the “new group” Experts consider that the US and Israel attacks resulted in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which is really their military, being more in control of the country than the civilian leadership,

Lie #7: Destroying Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons (Factcheck.org)

Trump said the U.S. “totally obliterated” three nuclear facility sites in Iran last June. Experts and a classified U.S. intelligence report said the sites were damaged and Iran’s uranium enrichment program was set back, but the sites and the country’s nuclear capabilities weren’t completely destroyed.

The president went on to say that Iran “sought to rebuild their nuclear program at a totally different location, making clear they had no intention of abandoning their pursuit of nuclear weapons.” He said the country was “right at the doorstep” of “a nuclear bomb, a nuclear weapon, a nuclear weapon like nobody’s ever seen before.”

As we reported last month, Kimball told us that “[w]hile Iran’s nuclear program remains a medium- to long-term proliferation risk, there was and is no imminent Iranian nuclear threat; Iran is not close to ‘weaponizing’ its nuclear material so as to justify breaking off negotiations and launching the U.S.-Israeli attack.” (see factcheck.org link at the end of this blog)

Lie #8 “We’re now totally independent of the Middle East, and yet we are there to help. We don’t have to be there. We don’t need their oil.’’ (AP Website)

From the AP fact checking: “It’s true that the United States is by far the world’s leading producer of oil and relies on the Persian Gulf for a fraction (8.5% in 2025) of the oil it imports. But, as is obvious at U.S. gas pumps, that doesn’t mean it is unaffected by the turmoil in the Middle East.

Oil is a commodity, “the price of which is set in a global market,’’ University of Chicago energy analyst Sam Ori said before Trump’s speech, “and a disruption anywhere affects the price everywhere.’’ Which is why the price of benchmark U.S. crude oil is up more than 50% since the Iran war began, and the average price of U.S. gallon of gasoline cracked $4 a gallon this week.”

Lie #9: Trump cited “record-setting setting investments coming into the United States, over $18 trillion.”

Trump has presented no evidence that he’s secured this much domestic or foreign investment in the U.S. Based on statements from various companies, foreign countries and the White House’s own website, that figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative and far higher than the actual sum. The White House website offers a far lower number, $10.5 trillion, and that figure appears to include some investment commitments made during the Biden administration.

A study published in January raised doubts about whether more than $5 trillion in investment commitments made last year by many of America’s biggest trading partners will actually materialize and questions how it would be spent if it did.

Lie #10: “Under my leadership, we are No. 1 producer of oil and gas on the planet, without even discussing the millions of barrels that we’re getting from Venezuela,” Trump said. “Because of the Trump administration’s policies, we produce more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. Think of that. Saudi Arabia and Russia combined, and that number will soon be substantially higher than that.”

As we’ve written, the U.S. has been the world’s No. 1 producer of petroleum, which includes both crude oil and refined petroleum products, such as gasoline, since 2013, and it has produced the most crude oil, including lease condensate, since 2018, as was long predicted. The International Energy Agency said in a 2012 energy outlook report that the U.S. was projected to become “the largest global oil producer” by “around 2020” due to advances in shale extraction technology.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has been the leader in natural gas production even longer — since 2009, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The U.S. overtook Russia to become the top producer of natural gas, and it has produced more of it than Russia and Saudi Arabia, combined, in all but one year since 2014.

Saudi Arabia and Russia had produced the most petroleum and crude oil until the U.S. surpassed them years ago. The U.S. has produced more petroleum than Saudi Arabia and Russia together since 2024, but it does not produce more crude oil than those two countries combined.

I note that the US production increase has been largely the result of deep water exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and the frakking of tight sands. The latter has increased recently, because of the increase in gas prices as a result of increase demand to power data centers devoted to AI and bitcoin mining.

Lie -#11: Basically, Biden killed the economy, and I made America great again (Factcheck.org)

Trump repeated his false claims about turning around a country that was “dead and crippled” economically.

“We built the strongest economy in history,” he said. “We’re going through it right now, the strongest in history. In one year, we’ve taken a dead and crippled country, I hate to say that, but we were a dead and crippled country after the last administration, and made it the hottest country anywhere in the world by far, with no inflation, record-setting investments coming into the United States over $18 trillion and the highest stock market ever, with 53 all-time record highs in just one year.”

Trump didn’t create the “strongest” economy in his first or second term as president. Economists generally measure a nation’s health by the growth in real (meaning inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product. In his first year back in office, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said that real GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.1% in 2025, which was down from the annual rate of 2.8% in 2024 under his predecessor.

In addition, as of February, the unemployment rate in the U.S. had increased to 4.4% — up from 4% when Trump took office in January 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

There is also still inflation, even though the annualized rate, based on the Consumer Price Index, did decline from 3% in January 2025 to 2.4% as of February. Overall prices may have increased further since then. The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is predicting that the annual inflation rate in March was back up to 3%, largely because of the impact that the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran is having on energy prices.

And Trump continues to inflate the total amount of investments he has secured from foreign companies and countries. The White House’s own website puts the figure at $10.5 trillion — not $18 trillion. But as we’ve written, even that number cannot be substantiated because it includes pledges and planned investments that may not materialize, as well as some investments that may not be due to Trump.

Conclusion:

It was largely a feel-good speech if you were a devote Trump believer. To the rest of us, it was packed with lies, and tiring to hear it again The takeaway was, unfortunately, bombs work better than talk. Obama worked out an imperfect but workable solution with onsite inspections to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons.

Wars have horrible consequences. United States was “likely” responsible for bombing of girls’ school in Iran, per early U.S. assessment. Yet Trump could boast that he took action that no other president dared to do.

I think the PBS review of his speech nailed it, as he didn’t tell us anything we already know. It was a quick sales job. What he didn’t say was probably more telling as he has constantly been claiming that the US and Iran were holding talks in Pakistan to end the conflict. Not a word in his speech of how this war would end.

PBS also noted that there was no mention of NATO or any European powers. He took a convenient off ramp to the soaring world-wide oil prices. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz because of the Israel and US attack, and very predictably, gas prices have increased about 30% to 50%. Trump is definitely right, tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz are mainly destined to Asia, not the US. But, the shortages of oil, means worldwide prices increase.

Stay tuned,

Dave

Links:

PBS: 4 takeaways from Trump’s address on the Iran war

CBS News: United States was “likely” responsible for bombing of girls’ school in Iran, per early U.S. assessment

FACT FOCUS: False claims Trump made as he addressed the nation about Iran

FactChecking Trump’s Prime-Time Address on Iran